The Thornburg Variations

What happened and how will it all play out?

Thornburglars In May 2007, the Santa Fe City Council approved a $45 million bond to build a new campus for the eponymous companies of local finance tycoon Garrett Thornburg. By that fall, Thornburg’s mortgage company began investigating a new strategy: Had it succeeded, Thornburg might have been eligible for some of the $700 billion federal bailout that followed. Things worked out differently.

Updates You Might’ve MissedOn a Friday-going-on-Saturday when the Carlos Fierro trial dominated local headlines, the company that was Thornburg Mortgage announced that its founder, H Garrett Thornburg, Jr, was stepping down as board chairman. Journal North editor Mark Oswald had the story, which you can’t read unless you subscribe to that paper.

Big Shakeups, Bad Omens At Thornburg
Last week, Reuters reported that the federal Justice Department official overseeing the bankruptcy, as well as the company’s creditors, are examining “potential misappropriation” of assets by Thornburg Mortgage executives related to their new venture, SAF Financial Inc.

Try, Try Again Multiple sources now tell SFR Thornburg plans to start a new company, structured as a savings and loan or thrift. That could mean a fresh start as a bank, with new government regulators. Partly because of its corporate structure, Thornburg Mortgage was ineligible for federal bailouts last year. (Thornburg Investment Management, a separate company, remains in business.)

The House Thornburg Lost
As rise-and-fall stories go, Thornburg Mortgage's is neither the biggest nor the most shocking. But it is worth studying because Harold Garrett Thornburg Jr. is more than a man of his time. He is a man who made his time.
So how did it come to this?

Payback Time
On Feb. 27, a public pension fund in Michigan filed a class-action complaint against Thornburg in Santa Fe’s 1st Judicial District Court.